
Class u 4* 4^7 
Book uO ^^- 



^^ X- 



REMARKS ON CERTAIN TOPICS 
rOXNECTED WITH THE GE^'ERAL SUBJECT ^ 



SLAVERY: 



J!i. HEIVRY DICKSOTV, ^I. ». 



Article I-Appeared in Southern Literan' Messenger, Muj, lS,i*. 



\KTici.E II-Appeared ir. Christian Examiner, October, 1844-(See 
Iiurcd'JCtion to Article II.) 



RE-PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF SEVERAL FRIENDS. 



CHARLESTON ; 

•BSKBVER OrFlCE PRE!" 



1845 






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^ m % ' 9 



Article I. 

PREFATORY REMARKS. 

The following article was not written for publication, having been pre- 
uared only for a few friends who compose a Literary Club in Charleston, 
and the author has been prevented from even revising it for the press.— 
It will be seen that his views do not go so far as those of many other able 
writers jn the South; but regarding Slavery as an existing institution, 
inwoven with the frame work of our social and political systems, the Mes- 
senger wishes to present the subject in every aspect. A few years since, 
as the author remarks, philanthropists in the South were busy with 
schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the slave. The late 
movements in the North, and elsewhere, have greatly checked these hu- 
mane efforts. But this should not be so ; for such evidences would strip 
our opponents of half their arguments. Though we can not concur with 
the writer in all his views, we heartily join with him in the liberal and 
enlightened sentiments which he expresses. Whilst we insist that the 
non-slaveholder has no right, politically or religiously, to interfere with the 
institution of Slavery among us, we do recognize our bounden duty to 
afford our dependents every means of moral and religious improvement. 
The author of the following review contends that our slaves should be 
taught to read and write. This is at present prohibited by law, and we 
are not prepared to say that the policy of the Law should be changed ; but 
a vast improvement may be effected by oral instruction, and we rejoice 
to know that this is extended to them, in an increasing degree, in many of 
the slave-holding States. In the town of Augusta, Georgia, a short time 
since, we saw persons zealouslv engaged in a Sabbath School for slaves. 

Were not our revilers and assailants culpably ignorant of the easy and 
comfortable lot of our slaves, of the humane feehngs and sentiments of 
their masters towards them, and the efforts in progress for their improve- 
ment, which these, their pretended and misguided friends, do all in their 
power to repress and have greatly checked, they would be more just to 
us and more truly friendly to the negro. The following instance will illus- 
trate their ignorance. We happened to be in Mount Vernon, Ohio, during 
the session of an Abolition Convention, and entered into conversation wiih 



• ^ ♦ % 



a man who seemed to be a sort of leader in the asseniblagc Ainongsi 
other strange things, he asserted that the people of the slave states felt 
so insecure, thai they slept with loaded arms under their heads and by 
their beds. We avowed that we lived in a slave State, denied the truth 
of the assertion, and maintained that if any feeling of fear did exist, it had 
been recently produced by the interference of abolition and fanaticism. 
We had for years slept securely without any defensive precaution ; had 
then travelled several thousand miles in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee, without any kind of weapon, and scarcely thought of arms 
until we got into the guard-mounted mail coaches of Ohio. 

Seeing the importance attached to the question of Slavery in the Union, 
we shall use the influence of the Messenger to bring about a better under- 
' standing of the subject, hoping that more light will produce greater mode- 
■■stion and a more friendly spirit. — Editor of Messenger. 



SLAVERY IN THEFREmi COLONIES, 

B''.ing a Revicvj of a Report made to the Minister, Secretary of 
State, of t/ie Marine and the Colonics, hy a Commission 
instituted for the examination of the questions relating to 
Slavery and the Political Constitution of the Colonies. — 
With two plans of Emancipation, hy the Due de Broglie and 
M. de Tocqueville. 

By Samuel Henry Dickson, M. D. 

" Slavery," says Judge Carleton, of Louisiana, " is a na- 
tional evil which the Americans deeply deplore. It is against 
the spirit of their institutions, and must have an end." 

Mr. Black of Georgia, in his place in Congress, denies 
that slavery is, in any sense, an evil — and so I understand 
Mr. McDuflie, and several others of the champions of the 
South. 

Somewhere between these extremes of opinion lies the 
truth. 

I hold with Judge Carleton, that slavery is an evil — but 
not in the ordinary or common-place view of the matter. 

Poverty is an evil ; slavery, as it exists among us, is a 
permanent and hopeless state of poverty. Dependence is ars 



«vil ; and slavery is a condition ot' necessary dependence 
Enforced labor is an evil ; slavery implies a continued series 
of enforced labor. 

But the Judge is entirely in the wrong when he affirms 
slavery to be inconsisient with the " spirit of our institutions." 

If the slave were, in any sense, on a level with his mas- 
ter, or capable of attaining such equality, there would be 
some ground for his assertion ; but he knows that this doc- 
trine — though incorporated in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence — is untrue, and is steadily and indignantly denounced. « 

The minor is denied all political ah*d*"many civil right j^ljW ■- •** , 
because he is thought to be unfit to enjoy or exercise them. 
It is perhaps, for the same reason, that they are withheld , 
from women. I hold thaj they can never be accorded to the ^ 
negro, precisely on that ground ; that he is 7iot and never ^ 
can become adequate to their exercise, or fit for their enjoy- 
ment. Politically, then, he can never cease to be a slave, 
and his inferiority being stamped upon him by the hand of 
God himself, is a truth which cannot be inconsistent with 
any other truths. He is, politically, in no worse condition 
than a woman or a child ; and this is not dreamed to be in- 
consistent vvith our institutions, except by a few ranters, such 
as Fanny Wright and Owen — unworthy of notice or of reply. 

The social evils, acknowledged above to be a part of the 
description of slavery, deserve our fullest and conscientious 
attention. Do they belong necessarily to its essence — can it 
exist without them, — it being put an end to, will they cease ? 
Will Freedom remedy them ? To all these questions I an- 
swer, unhesitatingly, in the negative. 

Labor — notwithstanding all the petty sentimentality with 
which it is spokeri of in prose and poetry by the Childs, the 
Longfellows, and the Everetts, — Labor is a curse, and is 
every where felt to be so. But freemen work, at least white 
freemen, much harder than slaves. It is the price to be paid 
for improvemvnt, for civilization. The savage works as little 
as possible— and to as little purpose as possible. The labor 



I 



of the free man is ermobled by its object — its motive,— that 
of the slave can never be elevated by its purpose or its results 
This constitutes the only difference between them ; — and to 
this view, the whole history of the negro every where shows 
him to be totally insensible. To him, therefore, there will 
be nothing gained by a freedom which condemns him to long- 
er and more difficult taskwork. 

Dependence is an evil surely — both in itself and in its 
results ; but it is only felt to be an evil among equals. Con- 
scious inferiority seeks refuge in dependence, and the negro 
,jt^f|*e very where andJrt^at all times exhibited a profound con- 
sciousness of inferiority to the white man. The woman and 
the child are most happy in dependence. 

Poverty is an evil. But if an agrajrian division of comforts 
conld take place all over the world, the Southern slave would 
be above the average point. He would not be so poor — so 
destitute of the means of living as the Red Indian, the dark 
Polynesian, Australian, and Fuegian, or his free black brother 
of Dahomy or Ashantee. 

Let U9 examine the condition of the free masses in merry 
England, as represented by Judge Carleton in the very paper 
from which I extracted the sentence placed at the beginning 
of this rude sketch. As to dependence, the arable acres of 
that beautiful and happy land, on touching whose shores the 
shackles of the slave fall from his limbs, are owned by 
33,000 persons : — 25,970,000 being tenants of the fraction. 
As to poverty, the average wages of those who can get work 
are 8.9. 6(Z. per week — their food, potatoes and salt — wretch- 
edness, rags, and destitution, the lot of about 20,000,000, who 
suffer daily the pangs of unsatisfied hunger. 

As to labor, the free Englishman often "begs in vain for 
leave to toil'' — and there never was known to any tribe of 
slaves, ancient er modern, labor so demoralizing,* so degrad- 
ing,! so destructive to life or health,^ so ill paid, so ill requi- 

* Woman's Work in the Collieries, t Minute division of labour. 
t Dry grinding — 28 years the maximiim. 



led, as iliai which coubUUUes the every day iiusiuess oi thou- 
sands in the workshops and collieries of this seat and centre 
of civilization. Fatal, then, would be the boon of freedom to 
the slave, if it reduced him to the level of the hand-looro 
weaver — the dry-grinder, or the collier. But can nothing be 
done to ameliorate his condition ? Much may be done : but 
I confess that I do not see the least reason for the anticipa- 
tion of a period when slavery shall cease to exist among us. 
Its abolition, if desirable, which I have already presented 
some reasons for doubting, and shall show more as we pro- 
ceed, is obviously impossible — and, as Judge C. has said of 
its existence, " inconsistent with our institutions." Repub- 
licanism scarcely admits of the arrangement of distinction of 
castes otherwise than in the present form of master and slave. 
Equality — what is it ? Nothing, unless it implies universal 
suffrage. It is uncertain how long it will allow of any dis- 
tinctions at all — how long be.^ore democracy* will run into 
radicalism ; radicalism into political socialism and agrari- 
anism. 

Lord Morpeth might safely sit at Exeter next on the 
platform to a black LJv. D., applaud his eloquence and shake 
hands with hira as a brother. The English Constitution 
secures him from the intrusion, political or social, of such 
kinsmen. But in South Carolina, when the black voters 
out-number, as by a law of nature they soon would do, their 
pale opponents, we should liave a black governor — not to 
speak of other equally awful incidents. Imagine the ques- 
tion brought before the English nobility and gentry in the 
shape which it presented to their colonists — an alternative of 
life, and (far worse than death,) enforced and intimate admix- 
ture with an inferior and degraded race ; — imagine the possi- 
bility of a Hottentot Victoria — a mulatto Peel, and a mustee 
Wellington ! Human nature . revolts at the thought ; yet I 
have seen in a West India paper, edited by a fanatical white 

* Not used in the party sense. 



man, — a repeiuantsiiinef now 1 doubt not, — a paragraph ex- 
ulting in the formation of a " tri-coloured jury." With St, 

Domingo and the English West Indies before their eyes 

and aware, as they frankly assert, of the evil results of the 
movement in boihtiiese cases, the French Government, urged 
by the madness of the times, is about to make a third experi- 
ment of the same nature. 

A friend has loaned me a copy of " a Report, (printed 
March, 1843,) made to the Minister Secretary of Slate, of 
the Marine and the Colonies, by a Commifision instituted ior 
the examination of the questions relative to Slavery and the 
Political Constitution of the Colonies." 

The Committee, consisting of 15 membeis, have reported 
decidedly in favor of the abolition of slavery, and have pre- 
sented two plans for the consideration of the government. — 
The one, whose author is understood to be the Due de Bro- 
glie, contemplates the " simultaneous and general" emanci- 
pation of the slaves held in bondage in the French colonies, 
after an interval often years, the epoch being fixed in 1853. 
The second, from the pen of De Tocqueville, recommends an 
" emancipation partial and progressive," to commence with 
the slave children born in 1838, and to include, gradually, 
various classes of the slave population until twenty years 
have elapsed, when slavery shall be absolutely abolished. 
The ten years interval of the first, and the twenty years prog- 
ress of the latter project, are to be devoted to a preparation 
of the slave for his approaching elevation and a grat^us! adap- 
tation of the colonies to the great social and poiiticai change 
thus destined to be made in their condition. 

The Report ib an able paper — deserving of a more minute 
analysis and review than 1 have had lime to give it. I have 
read it with much attention and interest, and more astonish- 
ment at the singularly inconsistent admissions with which it 
abounds. It is full of important details ; the subject is con- 
sidered in all its relations. They seem fully aware of its 
difficulties, discuss them with much sagacity and ingenuity, 



and liave reasoned as imparlially upon it as was perhaps 
possible to Europeans in 1842. 

The great error which rlins through all their speculations 
is the assumption, that the negro, as a slave, is a fallen crea- 
ture, degraded from some high estate by the contingency of 
slavedom. But what is the condition of the African negro in 
his native home ? He is there a savage ; and like all other 
savages, — J. J. Rousseau to the contrary notwithstanding, — in j^ 

evil plight and fidl of misery. He is, iMfli^and ever has ^^k^tC 
been, in turn, a slave and a master. As a master, hs is a 
ferocious tyrant; — as a slave, trodden to the dust. Ti»e hor- 
rors of the middle passage past, what does he lose by the 
change of residence which gives him a white despot instead 
of a black one. (y, suppose him as free as any other savage 
of Dahomy andi?iyshantee, and suddenly transported into a 
slave hut in Martinique, or a negro house on the banks of the 
Sautee or the Savannah ! I will not doubt that much misery 
is inflicted here, but it is not to be measured by the An"lo- 
Saxon or European standard. Our imaginations dwell upon 
the lot of the impiessed British sailor in that floating hell, a 
receiving ship, or during his long captivity at sea and his 
i'requeni transfers from one man-of-war to another, until he 
sinks under the sickness of heart which arises from hope 
deferred ; — or a Dartmoor — an Olmutz — or perhaps a Siberia 
forces itself into our thoughts. We will pity the unhappy 
negro : — 

'■ Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold ; 
Nor friends, nor sacred home I" 

His home! — what is home to the Foulah, or the JMandingo ? 
h is an Englishman's castle, — the heaven of many of the 
Caucasian race, — it must be much to the Hottentot. The 
hare returns to die in her form, — the foxes have holes, and 
the birds of the air inhabit, wiih fond tenacity, the nest they 
have built. But his home in Africa was as insecure as the 
den of the wild beast he hunted ; — there was no protection 
from the tyranny of the headman of his village, nor from tKe 



lu 

incursions of the neighboring tribe always at war with hiuj. 
His wife and children ! What is the woman of the savage 
any where but a domestic drudge ? Mungo Park, in that 
pathetic story of his sufferings, and the relief afforded by two 
kind negresses who took that pity on him which the gentler 
sex always delight to offer to the wretched, gives us the bur- 
den of the song which they sung, extempore, on the occa- 
sion, and which an Enorhsh lady of high rank turned into 
pretty vernacular. I do not love her, or admire her verses 
the less, that she evidently misunderstood the meaning of the 
refrain which ran thus — 

" Let us pity the white man — 
He has no mother to bring him milk, 
No wife to grind his corn." - 

The red man of the American wilds vvduld have compre* 
hended the privation better than the Duchess of Devonshire. 
Having killed his game, he sends his wife to bring it home, — 
the corn with which it is eaten being planted, hoed, gathered 
and ground, without his aid by her fair hands. 

God hears even the young ravens when they cry ; and man 
should turn a deaf ear to no moan or plaint which rises into 
the atmosphere. Wrong has been done to the negro by his 
enslavement — let the white man wash his hands from tha 
bloody guilt. Violence, injury, and torture, attend his trans- 
fer as a slave from one hemisphere to the other. Let all 
nations unite to put an end to the fiend-like cruelties of the 
traffic. But I repeat, I know not what the negro, — speaking 
of the mass, and of the present race emphatically, — has lost 
by the change : and it is this fundamental error of the Com- 
mittee which requires special remark. The black savage, as 
the slave of the white man, has undergone a process of civili- 
zation, — imperfect it is true, — but obviously and inevitably an 
improvement in condition, — physically, intellectually, and 
morally. He is taught something : be it more or less, it is 
clear gain, — he is fed, clothed, and provided for. " Creature 
comforts," as the Puritans called them, all tinknoun and un- 



rboughl 01 by his dark ancestry, are his. He is no longer 
liable to be starved into cannibalism. He is, to be sure, 
Ibrcedto labor; but so he w?.= tp Africa, and so he will be, 
as we shall see, when he becomes what the Committee call, 
(not ironically,) a " free man." He enjoys a double protec- 
tion,— that of law,— unheard of by his progenitors and unin- 
telligible to himself, and that of his master's interest in him ; 
not 1*0 mention that of public opinion everywhere and daily 
becoming, in regard to this topic, more hu;nane and en- 
lightened. 

As the Committee have taken for granted that the negro 
enslaved, has become a degraded creature under the pressure 
of slavery, so they consistently enough assume that this 
pressure being once removed he will rise promptly, or in due 
time, to the level of his former condition, or to an equality 
with the white race. They have not ventured to be precise 
on this point. They do not discuss the question of the de- 
gree of his improvability.* To get rid of present evil they 
dare the dangers of the untried future. They testify to the 
lapse of the Haytien? more and more notorious and shocking. 
They pronounce the English experiment a failure, and yet. 
do not appear to have dreamed of the possibility of a similar 
result to their own contemplated projects.! That the negro, 
when emancipated, will retrograde, whether in a French or 

♦ They dwell, p. 309, upon the capricious dispositions of the negro — his 
\;nwillin<Tness to labor as an agriculturalist whenever he has an alternative 
—his fondness for luxury and for gaming ; yet they ascribe to him " provi- 
dence and a promptness in learning to save money !" 

t "In no country of the world," sav the Committee, p 319, "does man 
work more than is required to satisfy his necessities, (besoins,) his tastes, 
(gouts,) his desires." This may be true, for the desires of the civilized 
and educated man are illimitable— and of the poor man^crushed by the 
weight of circumstances^is few needs— though 

" He wants but little here below, 

INor wants that little long" — 
are not to be supplied by the most unremitting labor of which his frame is 
capable. But what savage does as much work as is required to satisfy his 
necessities'? Not the Negro, nor the Indian, norlhe Arab, Improvidence 
is one of the characteristics of the inferior race^and hence so large a 
proportion of the miseries which, according to travellers— Catlin, Murray. 
Park. T.ander. Olin — they are destined to endure and sink under 



Kiighsb Colony, is nevertheless ceriaui. 'Ine black ia..e is 
notcivilizable per se, nor unless perforce, sustained and con- 
trolled by their Caucasian superiors. On this theme let the 
Abolitionists ponder. They assert that the negro is capable 
of educating himself, or, at least, will get along with such aid 
from us as a free man will and ouglit to receive. They must 
support the burden of proof : let us examine the testimony 
adduced. Hayli has emancipated herself, and England 
emancipated her colonies. The contingencies were favora- 
ble in these cases, especially the last ; let us gather the histo- 
ry of the events in both from the Committee. 

In St. Domingo, the negroes, — caring as little for the distaiit 
future as the Committee, or J. Q. Adams, or Garrison, or Dr. 
Channing, — having made themselves free, of course took 
holiday, and it was found necessary to force them to work. 
The first regulations for this purpose were mild, and failed. 
The negroes did not understand or regard them, and said, 
" Commissaire Polvercl (the author) li bete trop! li pas 
connai yen !"* Toussaint Louverture — the Hero of Miss 
!Martincau's " Hour and the Man," Vainqueurdes Anglais, as 
\he Committee call him, Vainqueur des Mulatres, as he is 
styled bv one of his black panegyrists, " governed the colony 
verv wisely, which, under him," says Malentant, " was flour- 
ishing. The whites were happy and tranquil on their estates 
and the negroes worked.''^ And well might they work ! " His 
code," say the Committee, " was infinitely more rigorous 
than that of Polverel ;" King Stork for King Log. But even 
this code, rigorous as it was, soon became a disregarded and 
forgotten form. " Toussaint simply instructed his inspec- 
tors; and they acted accordingly," (en c(fisequence.)t These 
inspectors were his own nephew Moses — and Dessalines, 
" afterwards Emperor." " These officers exercised over 
their subordinates an unlimited power — and all the declara- 
tions concur in representing the system established as the 

♦ PatTC 192. ^ Page 194 



3:i 

most arbitrary and despotic possible. The rohip was abol- 
ished ; but they used vvithoul scruple the cudgel and the roots 
of those plants which they call in Hayli lianes, (supple- 
jacks ?) The sabre and the musket were frequently employ- 
ed. — nay, they went so far as to bury men alive !" 

They wive a story of a preornant woman beaten so severely 
by order of Dessaliups that " abortion took place on the spot." 
The most inflexible " rigor was employed against laziness, 
(paresse.") From General Pamphile La Croix, they quote 
as follows : " His two favorites," Toussaint's^Miss Marti- 
neau's Man !y" were Moses and Dessalines. These two 
chiefs, naturally impetuous, were ill-humoured and of difll- 
cult access. General D., above all, conversed with a savage 
and repulsive air. It was rare that he did not distribute 
blows of the cudgel to the chiefs of gangs when he inspected 
the works of a plantation. If any of them threw the blame of 
defective culture upon the laziness of the hands generally, he 
had one of them selected by lot to be hung. But if they indi- 
cated one (un cuUivateur) by name as a di.sputer or sluggard 
— pour raisonneur, ou pour faineant, — this cruel man in his 
rage, (ses emportements.) made them bury him alive and 
forced the whole gang to witness the agonies of his victim. 
One may conceive, that with such barbarous means ten new 
citizens, pretenduB libres, should do as inuch work as thirtij 
slaves formrrlyy* » / 

The Committee speak favorably ofi B w y e e^ " Rural Code /wtyY'^^^ 
for the Republic of Hayti," in comparison with " ces codes 
informes, et sanguinaires, promulgated by Toussaint and by 
Christophe, and executed by Dessalines. f It was elaborated 
at leisure by a deliberative assembly composed exclusively of 
blacks and men of color. It makes two distinct classes, — 
la classe industrielle et la classe agricole. It forbids the 
latter to establish themselves in the towns or villages without 
express permission from the authorities ; to bring up their 

' Note 1. paae 194 t Pa^e 327. 



u 

cliiidren there wiUiOui similai- permission , lo lourid new 
towns, villages, or ' bourgades,' by building their habitations 
in close proximity ; to exercise any otner profession than the 
culture of land, prohibiting especially boating and fishing ; to 
open shops either wholesale or retail. Every laborer must 
be bound to some planter or proprietor ; the engagement not 
lo be for l(>ss than two years, nor to extend beyond nine. He 
must not quit his work unless by permission from his employ- 
er, and the permit must not exceed eight days. Failing to 
bind himself as above, he is arrested, taken before a justice of 
peace, sent to a maison d'arret, and then to lliQ-public works." 
This is the freedom they hive gained and preserve! Noth- 
ing is said of any advance in education or morals, — or any 
progress in the useful or refined arts. 

As to British emancipation, it is not. peihaps, to be won- 
dered at, that a French Committee should pronounce it a 
complete failure; "ce plan a completement echoue.'"* The 
total absorption of all the resources of the colonist proprie- 
tor in capital and interest, — in the payment of the freed 
black, favored as he was by the Governor, f — in the great 
contest going on then, as every where, between labor and 
capital, will, it is predicted, — and the documents bear out the 
prophecy, — produce, probably at no distant period, the abso- 
lute abandonment of the islands to the negroes " who, possess- 
ing neither capital nor credit, nor industry, will end by relaps- 
^^«.tt^ ing into barbarism." It is well known that Antigua and 
Barbadoes are exceptions to the seeming correctness of this 
dark picture. Antigua rejected the preliminary apprentice- 
ship of the slaves, and emancipated them at once ; and loud 
have been the praises of the sagacity and humanity of her 
people. Great stress is laid, too, upon her continued tran- 
quility and prosperity, and the orderly and industrious con- 
duct of her free blacks. But the Committee insinuate that the 
condition of things is not what it appears to be, and then go 

'' Paae 141. ^ Paaes292 and 293 



\ 



15 

on to oft'ef an ex[)lanauou of the apparent exception presented 
here. " The Island of Antigua is very small ; all the arable 
land is under cultivation, and the blacks could not find low- 
priced lots to purchase."* The density of population is 
comparatively prodigious, being 339 to a square mile, while 
that of Jamaica is only 76. f The whole number of blacks is 
30,000, (p. 156.) " Being forced to live then on the planta- 
tions, they were obliged to work for the planters, and thus a 
reasonable scale of wages wa« arranged. Every where else, 
(except at Barbadoes where the circumstances were similar,) 
the negroes, much fewer in number, in proportion to the 
surface of land, left the plantations, scattering themselves 
about, and especially fixingthemselves for dissipation sake in 
the neighborhood of towns and villages. Hence wages be- 
came high and the amount of labor uncertain, and the planta- 
tions faited to pay their expenses. At Barbadoes and Anti- 
gua, the Committee say emphatically, the labor of the free 
man, under the wnight of a moral necessity, is more produc- 
tive than that of the slave under restraint. "|: This is a strange 
use of the word moral ; by their own showing the necessity 
is physical in the most absolute sense. The negro has no 
alternative, — he must work or starve protnptly : Nay, thev' 
establish his unwillingness by proof positive. " The docu- 
ments of the time," the> say, and give references to these 
documents, " inform us that the first movement, — there as 
elsewhere, — was to abandon work in the fields, — to precipitate 
themselves into the towns, — to encumber all the mechanical 
trades; they lounged (rodaient) abont the fishing places and 
gathered crabs or other eatables, rather than procure their 
bread by honest industry. It was only after some time, and 
under the pressure of circumstances above stated, that they 
decided on returning to the plantations.''^^ Moral quotha ! — 
From one of the documents referred to, they give in a note.jj 
the following extract. " Under slavery, doubtless, the man- 



* Page 319. + Page 157. i Page 319. <^ Page I-^S. !! Page 15fl. 
Rapporl^e Capt. Layrle. 



16 

iiers were far I'roai beiny regular ; Inu the liisgustuig spet,-iael6 
of vice never showed itself as now." The slaves were not 
under restraint. " No where in the colonies had 1 seen the 
streets covered with girls, or to speak more correctly, with 
children speculating upon the physical advantages which 
nature has given them. I saw this for the first time at 
Antigua, and I must avow that I saw it too upon a great 
scale." This is the chosen spot where "the number of min- 
isters, of congregation's of missionaries : the number of church- 
es, of chapels, of schools, was very considerable. Religious 
instructiiin and education, properly so called, had received 
very great developements ; and, besides, the slave class had 
enjoyed, by the liberality of their masters, marty of the privi- 
leges inherent in the condition of freemen. CtJiisulted by the 
governor, the principal congregations declared loudly that, to 
their knowledge, the blacks were altogether in a condition 
to use well the advantages of liberty."* 

I must not be understood to say tha' tlie Commitipe are 
altogether blind to the dangers of immediate disorder upon 
the removal of the resiraints ol slavedum. Against many of 
these they have provided sagaciously — against others they 
have inade no elhcient provision. Although they remark that 
" the nature of men is not to be changed by the stroke of a 
wand," yet they calculate with unreasoning confidence, on 
the tendency of things to improve when they have removed 
the condition in which they imagine themselves to have de- 
tected the source of all the evils before their eyes. Freedom 
they hope will cure the vices of the slave. The negro they 
assume to be, in his native state, virtue itself. Yet, with 
some inconsistency, they tell us that they anticipate some 
difficulty from the deficiency of religious cultivation pf the 
slaves inlhe French West Indies. They tell us that religion 
is exceedingly neglected among the negroes. 'I'hey give the 
proportion of 2,500 souls, or near it, to every Priest, — and 

* Paffo 156. _ 






these, ibey affirin, are not only less numerous than tiiey 
should be, but have been by no means well selected or well 
fitted for the posts they occupy. They comment with some 
force upon the peculiar and valuable aid which the British 
Governor derived from the clergy and from their influence 
over the negroes. 

In both the projets de loi presented, it virill be seen that 
the negro, — during his preparation for what the Committee 
not ironically, call freedom, and after his emancipation, — is 
to be subjected to numerous and somewhat close restrictions ; 
the wisdom of which I neither deny nor doubt. He is con- 
strained to labor. The means of constraint are not detailed. 
The whip will of course be abolished as in Hayti, — it is too 
horrible to think of Will they, too, substitute the milder 
tieans of )i«^ roots, supple-jacks, clubs, sabres, rausketa — 
burial alive ? 

Care is to be taken that the price of vacant lands shall be 
made too high to admit of the negro becoming a purchaser. 
He must engage himself with some planter, or proprietor, in 
order that his labor may be made continuously productive of 
the great West Indian staples — sugar and coffee. He must 
remain in the island where he is made free. The price of 
his labor — his wages — must be arranged for him. The man- 
ner of payment, in money or produce, will be dictated to him. 
His hours of labor are fixed by law. He must go to school 
and to church, according to law. 



Projet de liOi of the Majority of the Committee. 

EMANCIPATION GENERAL AND SIMULTANEOUS. 

Titrcl. A. 1. On the 1st January, 1853, slavery shall cease 
to exist in the French Colonies ; 
A. 2. In the meantime the slaves remaining in their 
actual condition as now — 1843 — except th© 
modication hereinafter laid down. 
A. 5. Slaves shall be capable of owning personal 
property, (des biens meubles.) 
3 



18 

A. 6. Which they may transmit by will or other- 
wise dispose of. 

A. 7. They cannot enter a suit at law but by z 
Curator ad hoc, (special trustee,) to be 
named for them by the Procurateur du Roi. 

K. 4. Laws shall be made regarding the marriage 
of slaves — of whom 

A. 8. The husband shall control the property of the 
wife, (unless otherwise arranged in (he 
marriage contract,) and that of their minor 
children. 

A. IZ. They cannot possess as property, 1. ships or 
boats of any kind. 2. Gunpowder. 3. Fire 
arms. 

Titre II. A. 16. Every freedman (affranchi) shall enjoy civil 
rights. His children born free shall enjoy 
civil and political rights — conformably to 
Law. 

A. 17. Every freedman shall bind ^himself during, 
five years — for one or more years at a time, 
in the service of one or more planters in the 
colony. 

A. 19. His wages shall be regulated each year in 
maximum and minimum by order of the 
Governor in council. 

A. 20. Every freedman who cannot prove that he 
has diligently endeavored to engage himself 
as above, shall be arrested and conducted to 
a " disciplinary workshop or gang, (aiielier 
de discipline,) where he shall work gratuit- 
ously, and if need be, be forced to work. — 
If he justifies himself, not finding an engage- 
ment, he shall be employed dans I'attelier 
du domaine. 

(It is not stated howhe shall be contraint au travail.) 

A. 25. Freed-children under fourteen shall be in- 
cluded in the engagements of iheir mothers. 
Orphans under fourteen shall be received 
into a public establishment. 

Titre III. Provides for the indemnity to the colonists — 

150 millions of francs 
A. 27. being set apart to be divided among the colo- 
nies and the owners 
A. 28. of slaves therein according to certain "bases 
of distribution." 



19 
Projet de I.oi of the Jliiiority of tlic Committee. 

EMANCIPATION — PARTIAL AND PROGRESSIVE. 

Titrel. A. i. From ihis date shall be freed and declared 
free: 1. Children born in the French Col- 
onies of slave parents since January Ist, 
1838, inclusive ; 2. Children to be born 
henceforth in the said colonies. 
A. 2. They shall remuin until their 16th year — full 
— attaclud to their mothers. In case of 
lran.sfer or sale of their mothers, the new 
owner shall incur, in regard to them, all the 
duties of the former. In case of the en- 
franchisement of their mothers, the last 
owner shall still lie under the same obliga- 
tions in regaid to them. 
A. 3. After their 16lh year the children shall be 

raised at the expense of the State. 
A. 4. Colonists dispossessed by the present law are 
allowed an indemnity of 500 francs for every 
child arriving at the age of seven years — to 
be paid in three months from the day on which 
it reaches seven years. 
A. 5. From seven to twenty-one years, every young 
freedman shall be engaged, (or hired,) by 
its mother's owi.er, if she be a slave — if 
free, by her last owner. 
A. 6. The conditions of this engagement hold good 
under reservation of the right of the govern- 
ment. 1. To see that the aflranchi receives 
a religious and moral education ; 2. To 
take him away at will to some public estab- 
lishment. 
A. 7. The young engaged continues attached to his 

mother. 
A. 8. Freedmen, until 21, lemain, as to their civil 
interests, nnder the supervision of the public 
minister, or a trustee, appointed by him. — 
When 21 they shall exercise all rights 
assured to Frenchmen by the Civil Code. 
Their children, born free, shall enjoy civil 
and political rights according to law. 
A. 9. As each freed child successively by virtue of 
the present law attains its majority, its moth- 
er, if living, and the father, if it is born in 
lawful wedlock, shall be freed 



20 

A. 10. by the State—paying the indemnity whici; 

shall be arranged by agreement, " de gre 

a gre." 
A. 11. The parents thus freed shall enjoy civil rights. 

Titre II. A. 22. To each slave contracting marriage with a 
slave shall be allowed 100 francs, to be 
placed in a " savings' bank," (a la caisse 
d'epargne,) when it shall bear interest to 
their joint account. They cannot draw it 
without authority from the public minister.- 

A.23. Every slave shall be allowed to purchase his 
freedom ; if the 

A- 24. price be disputed, it shall be referred to the 
judge royal, who shall appoint arbitrators — 
, des experts. 

A. 25. The Colonial governors shall fix annually the 
price of such ransom in maximum and mini- 
mum. 

Tiirelll.A.26. Everv slavo whose age or infirmities render 
him incapable of labor, shall be freed, and 
shall enjoy 

A. 27. civil rights. His late owner shall continue 
to afford him lodging, food, clothing, and 
medical attendance when required — drawijig 

A. 28. a pension from the State which shall be ar- 
ranged by agreement, (de gre a gre,) 

A. 29. The mode of ascertaining incapacity for labor 
and of carrying into effoct A. 27 shall be 
ordained by law. 

Parther details are very much the same as in the plan of 
the majority. 

I have taken occasion to declare my belief, that the aboli- 
tion of slavery, — the emancipation of slaves, — is, in our own 
country, neither possible nor desirable. I have also said that 
I do not doubt that much may be done to ameliorate their con- 
dition : the time has come, I am persuaded, when it is both 
our interest and duty to make every » ff'Tt for the purpose. 
The wheels of civilization cannot stand still, and the slave 
forms so large a portion of our community, that, unless we 
provide for his participation in its advance, our share in the 
benefits it is capable of bringing with it must be small indeed. 
Twenty years ago the attention of Southern philanthropists 



21 

was strongly drawn to this matter ; but ihey were driven 
back, alarmed, silenced, stunned by the ignorant and reckless 
interference of the noisy throng of fanatical abolitionists. 
The iron fetters which had not long fallen from the arms of 
the white European, had begun to hang loosely on the limbs 
of the American negro ; the thick clouds of ignorance which 
had not yet ceased to bedim the most enlightened portions of 
the free globe were beginning to break away above the slave 
masses and let in some shining gleams of knowledge, of reli- 
gion, of morality. Their fetters were rivetted once more, 
and the deep darkness from which they were about to emerge, 
rendered doubly profound for a time, by the wicked intermed- 
dling of those, who, like Lord Sydenham of recent but hateful 
memory, exulted in the prospect of a bloody insurrection and 
a hopeless and purposeless servile war. 

But it is neither rational nor manly to allow ourselves to be 
influenced unduly by the fears thus excited. We cannot be 
deaf to the loud voice of public opinion resounding from every 
quarter of the world. We must listen to it, and reply — and 
act as justice and prudence shall dictate. Even China has 
been bombarded out of her vis inertioe in commercial affairs ; 
but it is to be hoped that the Southern slaveholder will need 
no other inducement than his own sense of right and natural 
humanity to urge him forward in the great purpose of promo- 
ting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the 
human beings under his care and control. Let us first remove 
all the impediments which are placed l-y law in the uay of 
rhe instruction of the slave. I do not know how far his edu- 
cation may be carried consistently with the proper perform- 
ance of the duties of the station which Providence has assign- 
ed him in the social scale ; but I trust that in another genera- 
tion a much larger proportion of the negro slaves of South 
Carolina may be found able to read their Bibles,* than now of 

* Increasins; altcnlion is now given to the moral and religious improve- 
ment of slaves in the South. Though not taught to read their Bibles, 
much instruction is imparted to them, and the efforts of the various sects 



32 

the free whites of Mississippi. Tiiis is set down at oae- 
tifteenth, — I know not how correctly, — in the late meesage of 
the Ex-Governor of that State. 

Humanity next demands from us some restriction upon the 
traffic in slaves amonj^ ours;'ives. The wanton or capricious, 
resentful or penal sale of the negro, — ihf disrup'ion ol all ties 
of affection or consanguinuity at the wiil oi the thoughtless, 
unfeelin((, or aiigry owner, should be put an end to. This 
might be well done, it seems to me, by the appointment in 
every district of respectable commissioners, themselves slave- 
holders, who should have jurisdic'.ion over this matter, and 
who, in the performance of their duties, could readily give a 
powerful sanction to the invaluably beneficent — nay, sacred 
institution of marriage. 

There are few points on which Spain or Spaniards may be 
referred to as presenting any examples worthy of modern 
imitation. The Committee give a pleasant picture of slavery 
in the Spanish Colonies, — not exactly corresponding with 
Abbott's it is true, but on the whole, it is probable, not very 
far from a correct one. " The Spanish slave," they tell us,* 
" may become a proprietor ; he may purchase his freedom — 
at a regulated rate and by little and little ; — he may force 
his master, if mal-content, to sell him if he can find a pur- 
chaser, at a fair price, fixed by authority ; — he may work 
when and where he pleases, provided he pays a definite 
amount of wages punctually." We are not surprised to learn, f 
" that during all the civil troubles, these slaves remained 
faithful to their owners and quiet. In South America, though 
the revolutionary party ofiered them their freedom, they fol- 
lowed the fortunes of their masters on the field of battle and 
in emigration. In St. Domingo, they remained perfectly 

are directed more immediately towards them Bishop Gadsden reported 
10 the last Convention of South Carolina ihat he had, during the past year, 
confirmed 313 persons, of whom 151 were coloured, nearly one half. 
Other denominations annually receive probably a much larger number. 

[ Editor of Messenger. 

"■ Page 153, + Pages 169,171. 



peaceable until conquered by the Republic ol Hayti in 1820, 
(from 1794, a period of twenty-six years.")* 

I would accord the slave the privilege of owning certain 
kinds of property and of purchasing his freedom under defi- 
nite regulations. There is no danger in the removal of the 
present restraints as to this mode of individual emancipation. 
We shall always have a sufficient number of slaves here. — 
The negro is proverbially fertile, and he will always be so in 
a favorable climate and in the state of bondage. He is thus 
kept at that point, — above destitution and below luxury, or 
full living, — which, by a law of nature, is found best adapted 
for the propagation of the species and its rapid increase and 
multiplication. 

I am not so clear as to his enjoyment of another privilege 
above mentioned — that of paying a certain rate of wages 
when discontented vvith personal servitude, or with the mode 
of occupation allotted him by his master. It is obvious that 
this would be inconsistent with the due management of a 
plantation, yet it might be introduced into the cities and an- 
swer a good purpose among town laborers, house servants 
and mechanics. 

* Doctor ("artwrighl, of Natchez, in an able article in the Southern 
Quarterlv Review, "Canaan iHentitied wjth Ethiopia,'' afiduces some 
renriarl<able examples of the fidelity of our slaves during the Revolution. 
Such as were seduced found their British allies more cruel than their 
masters ceuld possibly have been The Docior argues very slrotmly to 
show that the enlightened — Sydenhsmian srheinajof exciting our slaves 
to rebellion, in case of war, is impracticable — Editor of Messenger. 



Article II. , 

The following article was sent to the Editors of the (xhrietian Examiner., 
with a request that it should be published They agreed to do so, provid- 
ed they were allowed the usual editorial privilege of emendation, which 
would onlv be exercised in leaving out such portions ae appeared unneces- 
sarily harsh or severe. How very sensitively delicate our Northern breth- 
ren are upon this subject, will be well understood by observing that the 
"editorial privilege" of cutting out, extended to every word or sentence 
contained within [ ], (restored, as originally written, in the present copy.) 
The ** denote those sentences in which the change of a word or two 
occurred. 



Gentleman, — May I ask your insertion of a brief reply to 
the Letter of Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter, of Bristol, England — 
published in the July No. (1844,) of the Christian Examiner. 
[This distinguished Phy.'^iologist, who has attained a high 
reputation both at home and in America, has voluntarily en- 
tered a field in which he is little likely to gain any new lau- 
rels] His name, however, carries with it such weight that 
those of us who^hink hira in error, and who have hitherto 
been silent on tfle [revolting] subject of which he treats, 
cannot help feeling that the incorrect statements to which 
he has criven his endorsement, must not be left uncontradict- 
ed or his argument left unanswered. 

I am glad to notice that Dr. C. avoids the discussion -of the 
general subject of Slavery, " fully admitting that the ques- 
tion is a most difficult one, and that on his side of the water 
the number and extent of the difficulties which environ it are 
very imperfectly known." He comments upon an able arti- 
cle in a late number of the Christian Examiner, and objects 
to " a point, comprised in one sentence of that paper — a? 



2a 



lollows— the coloured population is said to be scattered among 
us. and yet separated from us by impassable barriers, physi- 
cal if not mental ; refused intermarriage ; refused intercourse 
as equals, &c." Dr. C. endeavours to demonstrate that this 
statement is neither " scientifically nor historically true."— 
'. How is he (the negro) ever to rise ?" exclaims the writer 
above quoted-well aware of the actual " difficulties which 
enviro.i the topic ;" these difficulties Dr. C. failing to appre- 
ciate, beheves himself to have removed ; and speaks lightly 
of thl impediments, natural and artificial, original and con- 
ventional, which oppose themselves to the elevation of the 

black race. 

In reply, I propose to maintain the doctrine laid down by 
your former correspondent, and to show that " these barriers 
are impassable ;" [that they will '.e, until "the Ethiopian can 
chan^,-^ his skin, and the Leopard his spots;"] that the "col- 
oured population" {ought to be and] must be "refused inter- 
course with us as equals ;" and that they neither can "rise" 
—as a race— by such intercourse, nor should the attempt to 
raise them in this way, especially if it imply intermarriage, 
ever be made, [or even thought of,] by the races already ele- 
vated above them. I propose to show that it is " historically 
true" that " an impassable barrier" has always existed be- 
tween the races— and that it is " scientifically true" that it 

exists now. 

As an article of religious belief or inference, it is totally 
irrelevant to discuss here the question of the original unity 
of the human race, concerning which he refers to the works 
of Dr. Prichard. It would occupy a volume to follow up Dr. 
P., whose facts are a multitudinous mass of every shade and 
grade of authenticity, and whose reasonings are all of the 
nature of special pleading. He is an advocate, anxious, aot 
to discover truth, but to maintain an opinion. [He tells us 
from Azara, that "in Paraguay oxen descended from the 
horned race are destitute of horns, and that horses are some- 
times seen in the same country hearing horns'''] Prejudices. 



2^ 

sentiments, accidental events, constitute the data Irom which 
his conclusions are drawn ; and any traveller who ofl'ers a 
favouring assertion is authority with hira. " Climate and cir- 
cumstances" give all the modifications of animal tribes, and 
accpunt, as in the view of our own Stanhope Smith, for all 
variations and peculiarities. " External contingencies," flat- 
tening the foot of the negro, have left that of the red man finely 
arched ; curling and shortening the African hair, they have 
smoothed and straitened that of the Hindoo in one hemis- 
phere, and [prodigiously] lengthened in the other the capil- 
lary covering of the Crow and the Mandan. 

Morton, of whom American science is justly proud, gives 
us the result of his profound, extensive, and cautious research- 
es, in the following proposition : " The physical or organic 
characters which distinguish the several races of men, are as 
old as the oldest record of our species." As they exist not 
less obviously now than they did 4000 years ago, and as they 
have not been overcome, they form barriers in the truest 
sense impassable. Delineations of the negro, from 1700 to 
2000 years, B. C, abound in the Egyptian monuments ; their 
peculiarities being in every way strongly marked, and exact- 
ly the same as at the present day. 

Dr. C.'s own admission on this subject of " marked differ- 
ences," are abundantly sufficient. " Between a Guinea coast 
negro and an intelligent Englishman or American, the dis- 
tinctions do appear definite enough." "The Caucasian races, 
as a whole, have vastly improved upon the original type, — 
the negro races have, taken as a whole, retrograded from it." 
In his " Physiology," he speaks very forcibly of the degra- 
dation of some of the tribes of Africa and New Holland, de- 
claring that " to bring up to the level of the European would 
probably require centuries of civilization."* " Being asked 
by Dr. Tuckerman whether twelve black children taken from 
their parents at a year old, and brought up with twelve white 
children of the same age, would show an equality of mental 



* Page 70, American edition. 



power with the latter," he answered, " certainly not ; but if 
the descendants of these black children were treated in the 
same manner for several generations, this equality would 
result." 

Whatever, then, was "the original type" from which the 
negro has retrograded — Adam or Noah — as the Caucasian 
has " vastly improved upon it, the distance between them 
must be doubly vast. How are they to be again brought upon 
a level — how is " the negro to rise"— how is the impassable 
barrier to be passed I 

If Prichard, and Stanhope Smith, and Dr. C. are right, and 
the negro has descended from a better station under the grad- 
ual and progressive pressure of adverse circumstances, these 
effects, even if the unfavorable contingencies be removed, 
will not cease at once, but must gradually subside and disap- 
pear, and it will take him a long time to regain " the level of 
the original type." Even then, according to Dr. C.'s own 
admission, he will be " vastly" below the Caucasian. In 
every fibre of his outward frame — in every faculty of his 

mental constitution, he bears the impress of 4000 years, 

133 generations at least of progressive degradation — doubly 
" vast." How many generations — how many centuries will 
it take him to retrieve his lost ground ? If unaided, he never 
will advance one step. [The tendency of the race has al- 
ways been retrograde ; to him " facilis descensus." The fact 

of his downward progress is undeniable and undenied.l 

When we first meet with the negro — in the world's infancy 
— he is just what we find him now ; conquered, subject; in 
servitude. All the elevation he has ever attained, has been 
procured at a heavy price of suffering and sorrow doubtless in 
most instances — from his contact with the white man ; to 
whose claim of superiority and mastership he has yielded a 
ready and humble assent. Even this elevation affects the 
individual alone, never having spread to or included a tribe 
however small ; a distinction totally unheeded by Dr. Car- 
penter, who would remove the ' impassable barrier' for indi- 



28 

viJuals, by separating them from the race whose elevation he 
contemplates. The negro never generates civilization in any 
of its lowest forms ; he never extends it to his compatriots ; 
he never transmits it to his posterity. When released from 
the hard school of the white — like the Indian returning to his 
native forest from the halls of Yale or Harvard — he relapses 
promptly into barbarism ; as we see in the individuals of the 
Amistad, and in the hordes of St. Domingo ; and as *(with 
the same probability,)* we will soon see, in the freed " ap- 
prentices" of the British West Indies. 

To avert this retrocession, he must cease to be a negro ; and 
here is the obvious inconsistency of Dr. C.'s plan of amalga- 
mation. He holds out to him, marriage with the white as 
"an improvement in his condition," and he offers it to him as 
" a reward," with the prospect of which he would excite his 
hope and ambition, and stimulate him to efforts at self-improve- 
ment and self-elevation. [Has .Dr. C. a sister or daughter 
whom he would hold out as a prize with " detur digniori" — 
"palmamqui meruit ferat" written on her bright foiehead — a 
sacrifice to philanthropy ; a victim, surely, for if it be elevation 
to the negro, such a marriage must be degradation to her. 
Dr C. has known, and I have known negroes to marry white 
■women. That a poor and destitute Caucasian should thus 
ally herself to a black man, however revolting, is not strange 
nor unaccountable. The average condition of the negro in 
reference to physical comtort, is infinitely above that of the 
wretched white slave of the British manufactory, or worse 
still, of the coal mine, trained from infancy to push with her 
forehead a loaded wagon, or drag it behind her on all fours by 
a harness passed over her shoulders and between her thighs, 
along the dark and subterranean tunnel, gloomy with fetid dust 
and oppressive with the smoke of the dim lamp. Far is it too, 
above that of the million of surplus female population, which, 
findini^no work, is destined to a resource more degraded and 
degrading than the hut of the savage of Van Dieman's land. 
With these — and such as these, unhappy — let the negro 



29 

" amalgamate" or intermarry, and we will thank Providence 
if it give them even this foul alternative.] 

But how will such connection elevate the black or " re- 
ward" him — that is Dr. C.'s word — for taking pains to culti- 
vate his mind and develope his faculties ? He is to be taught 
— and to be persuaded, to aspire. How high then shall we 
induce him to look up? Shall we indulge him with the hope 
of wedding into the family of some of the European aristocra- 
cy ! Dr. C. does not hint at such an " impassability." But 
'* the daughter of an American merchant may find the descend- 
ant of the despised negro, not unworthy of her attachment."' 
He does not insult with his [disgusting] suggestion the proud 
officials of the English Government, who, like Sir. Charles 
Metcalfe, looking from their lofty position on all beneath 
them as occupying a common level, forced the Colonels and 
Judges and Planters of the Colonies to associate on equal 
footing with their coloured fellow Colonists. No, nor any 
of the well born or well bred of the middle class of his own 
countrymen. " The daughter" — not of a British, but " of an 
American merchant" — is ccmrteously selected ; and she is 
to attach herself not " to the despised negro," but to "his 
descendant," who is to become "not unworthy of her attach- 
ment." He must improve then, it is admitted, upon the 
present " type ;" to improve, he must be educated ; and he 
must be educated by the white man ; for his own race is very 
unskilful in teaching, however apt they may be in learning. 
When will he be fitted for the honor and reward of intermar- 
riage with his teachers ? In the present sentence Dr. C. 
says, it may be " in one or tw0'«HMMHp»(*;" he had previously ^^4^*^*^"^*" 
told Dr. Tuckerman " several ;" and in his standard Phy;^ 
ology he doubts whether as to some of our scholars it may 
not require " centuries." 

In the experiment proposed by Dr. Tuckerman, the twelve 
black children starting from a lower natural platform than the 
twelve white, must, in order to reach them in any supposed 
length of time, improve /</5^fr than they. But they carry a 



3U 

double weight, and attempt an impossibility. Dr. C. inlbrms 
lis, (Vide Phys. pp. 69,70, Am. ed.) that acquired peculiari- 
ties as well as orij^inal constitution are tiansmuttd, heredita- 
rily, and that education creates " improvabiliiy" as well as 
confers improvement ; therefore the twelve white children 
being of a " vastly" superior race by hereditary constitution, 
of greater hereditary "improvability," and equally well-taught, 
must go onward and upward faster than the black, and at the 
end of " several generations" — if impossibilities could under- 
CTO augmentation, the gulph of separation would be wider, and 
the " barrier" between the two races more " impassable" than 
it is now. 

That the negro can be educated and will improve — under 
assiduous teaching — I do not doubt. [Even the Cretin is so 
far capable ; and we are delighted to learn that the wretched 
Idiot of the Alps has at last become the subject of benevolent 
and successful culture. Let the name of Guggenbuhl* — 
though in itself unmelodious, yet henceforth pleasing to the 
ear both of God and men — be added in let'ers of gold to that 
brioht catalogue which enrols a Howard, a Sicard, and a 

Howe.] 

That the negro ought to be educated, I have maintained 
always and elsewhere f That he is educated — and would be 
educated better and faster, if it were not for the injudicious 
interference of volunteer pedagogues, eager to thrust into his 
hands dangerous and improper primers and picture books, — 
are facts that ought to be known to the wise and good every 
where. But it must be repeated until the real friends of the 
neoro will hear aixLypjr^gt^^t. that it is unreasonable to expect 
him ever to attain equality with a competitor not only "vast- 
ly" above hitn now, but vastly more capable of rising, and 
vastly more ambitious to rise than he ; unless some means 
are applied to retard our pace, while his shall be accelerated. 

* Vide Twining on Cretinism, and the Institution for its Cure at In- 

terlachen 

+ Vide Southern Literary Messenger, Richnr.ond, May. 



31 

Anxious to cut ihis Gordian knot, and too impatient to wail 
for the preparatory education of " one, or two, or several 
genentions," proposed by Dr. C. many suggest, some have 
urged, and even Dr. C. himself very inconsistently mentions, 
without disapproval, the alternative of immediate and unre- 
strained amalgamation by intermarriage. The result of this 
experiment, which wherever possible,has been abundantly tried, 
will undoubtedly be the deterioration at once of the better race, 
andthe ultimatebarbarismanddestructionof both. [Theblacks 
are as eager as Dr. C. can be for their elevation in the social 
scale by this means, and prefer, whenever attainable, white 
husbands and wives ; but it is to be feared with very little 
appreciation of his views and purposes ; neither estimating 
the alliance as a reward for their own individual improve- 
ment, nor with any contemplation of the advancement of their 
descendants. The " baniers are impassable"] — however, in 
this country, [thank Heaven I] " the distinctions of race do 
really appear definite enuugh" to keep them well and widely 
apart. Nor does the mulatto, (too often, as Dr. C. reminds 
us, met with among us,) serve in any degree to blend them or 
diminish their distinctness, but rather by his presence widens 
the breach. He is looked up to bv the black — who knows 
and feels his superiority, mental and physical — with envy 
and hatred ; he is looked down upon by the white with con- 
tempt and aversion. He is doubly despised ; partly because 
of his ancestry, and partly because he is of course a bastard. 
He is not fated to maintain any where his doubtful and inter- 
mediate position. I believe with Dr. Nott that the mulatto 
is incapable of " keeping up his numbeT, but must decay 
and disappear — rising by admixture with the white, or falling 
back again in the same way into the ranks of his dark pro- 
genitor. I have no doubt of his comparative infertility and 
the inferior average duration of his life. I know that Dr. 
Forry has combated these views with his unfailing ingenuity 
and extensive research, — but I am well persuaded that time 
will establish their truth. 



32 

Two or three grand experiments of amalgamation have 
been made, and a third is now going on, the rosuii ot which 
it may be well to wail fur, bifore we plunge into the perils of 
anoiher. In the British West Indies the *dark race* is in the 
ascendant, and the recent immigration of poor European labor- 
ers will do no more than mingle their blood with that of the 
possessors of the soil before they fall victims to the pestilen- 
tial climate. Thus will a mongrel race be produced there, 
whose [lofty] destinies, like those of their [ferocious] neigh- 
bours of Hayti, time will amply develope. 

Mexico exhibits the [gratifying] results of this [grand] 
process of elevating the lower at the expense of the superior 
tribes. We are told that it is not easy to find a white under 
twenty years of unmixed descent — the only difficulty being 
to decide upon the proportion in each of the old Spaniard, 
the Morisco, the Indian, and the Negro. We would scarcely 
select the Mexican as a choice specimen of humanity. I 
think there is hardly while blood enouoh in the mass to 
save them from the universal retrocession to which the Moor, 
the Indian, and the Negro are doomed. 

But it is in Egypt, and the neighboring nations of the East, 
that we shall best see the effects of amalgamation — interfu- 
sion of Negro with Caucasian, continued for ages. Open 
the valuable work of Morton, (Crania Egyptiaca, p. 58,) and 
read the correction of one of the innumerable errors of Prich- 
ard's Mega Biblon. Dr. P. maintains the descent of the 
modern Nubians from a negro nation of hill country of Kor- 
dofan, because it suits him to ascribe the diversities of organ- 
ization to " climate and circumstanf es.'' Dr. M. reminds ub 
that " while the Negroes flow into the country from one side, 
the migratory Arabs invade it on the other; thus furnishing 
inexhaustible materials for the blending of the two races." 
He adds from Caillaud a remark on " the shortness of life, 
disease and dissipation of these people," and quotes with 
approbation from another " sensible and instructive writer," 
the statement, that " th© negro population is about one sixth 



3$ 

of the whole, and continually amalgamating with it. [While 
nature kindly endeavours to wash out the slain, every caravan 
from the south or west pours in a new supply of slaves and 
restores the blackening element."] 

In regard to Egypt, the influx of negroes is estimated at 
3000 a year — anciently by Arrian, recently by Madden — 
Morton calculates the number introduced within 3,500 years 
at more than 10,600,000. Clot Bey states the present negro 
population at 20,000 ; adding, that negresses form the greater 
nuinber of women in every harem. 

Thus we account at once for the degeneracy of the modern 
compared with the ancient Egyptian, — and for the progres- 
sive depopulation of that fertile and once densely peopled and 
highly civilized country. May God protect our posterity 
from the fate of Egypt, Mexico, and the West Indian Islands. 

From the perusal and attentive consideration of Dr. C.'s 
letter we learn — 1. That the negro is inferior — much inferior 
— to the while man ; " his race having retrograded from the 
' original type,' while ours has vastly improved upon it." 

2. That this inferiority is progressive in an augmenting 
ratio, because " acquired peculiarities are transmissible and 
transmitted by a law of nature as well as natural ones ;" and 
all that he acquiied while retrograding must be adverse and 
degenerate. 

3. That he is less improreable, or capable of education, 
th;in the white, — because this quality is always relevant to 
and essentially connected with his condition * 

4. That under the most favorable contingencies, — when 
enjoying intercourse with, and aided and educated by the 
highest race of whites, he will require, to reach their prebtnt 
level, " one or two," or " several generations," or " some 
centuries." 

* " From the intelligence of Man results his iraproveability ; and his 
improved condition loipresse^ itself upon his organization." — Carjicntcft 
Physiology, p. 69, American edition, 
5 



34 

5. Therefore, if the white raan improve at the same rate 
with the black, the latter will never attain the equality con- 
templated ; but this does not express more than a portion of 
the difficulty, for the white will and must improve /a^ie/-. 

6. Therefore, as " the barrier is impassable," — as we can- 
not " level up" rapidly enough, we must '• level down." and 
sacrifice the white man, retarding his improvement and ad- 
vancement to aid the black in his aspirations after " social 
equality" — [a project worthy of Anacharsis Clootz.] 

7. The only feasible mode of effecting this philanthropic 
purpose is amalgamation — the destruction of the two races 
by interfusion, and the creation of a third that shall approach 
the intermediate point occupied by the "original type," from 
which one retrograded while the other "vastly" improved. 
[The " West Indian steward" is to be encouraged to procure 
a wife among the perishing factory girls — or the wretched 
drudges of the coal mines — or the starving milliners of merry 
England : while " the daughter of the American merchant 
seeks and finds some descendant of a despised negro worthy 
of her attachment" — and deserving the reward of being "ele- 
vated in the social scale" by her fair hand.] 

Messrs. Editors, is it possible that our Northerii brethren 
— your readers — are prepared for this view of the subject 7 
Can they read, have any of them read Dr. Carpenter's letter 
with approbation, [or even with patience ?] I do not wonder 
at his calmness and [self-approving complacent] philosophi- 
cal philanthropy. *He can as well understand our situation 
in regard to this matter, and as fairly appreciate our difficul- 
ties,* [as did the French Princess the necessities of her sub- 
jects, when told they were starving for want of bread. — 
" Why don't they eat cake then 1" said the kind little creature.] 
Here we are in South Carolina with near 300,000 of the 
black race ; quiet, orderly, useful, gradually advancing in 
civilization, and meanwhile living as comfortably, we believe, 
•BS the labouring poor any where in the world. " Emancipate 
hem! emancipate them!" exclaim? the Abolitionist; 2i*d 



35 

the outcrv, beginning at our own border, resounds across tht 
Atlantic, and echoes Irom the Alps of the old vTorld and the 
AUeghanies and Andes of the new. Impossible — we re[)ly. 
We cannot yield to them our homes and our country. We 
cannot remain as equal co-occupants of the soil; they are in 
many senses, — physical and moral, — after all their enforced 
elevation in the social scale — an inferior race ; not yet civil- 
ized enough nor sufficiently educated to be safe fellow-citizens 
in a Republic without a standing army. They retain yet too 
much of the " original constitution," and too many of the " ac- 
quired peculiarities" of their African ancestry. [Among the 
most remarkable and tenacious of these is the universal habit 
of preferring rest to labour, and plunder to industry. With 
their Congeners, to be free is ever to be idle : and the experi- 
ence both of Hayti and Jamaica shows the failure of educa- 
tion to produce, thus far, any change in the nature or propen- 
sities of the race. If we yield ihe power of compelling them 
to work we shall all starve together.] 

Well then, says Dr. Carpenter, marry them — and elevate 
ibera in the social scale. Surely "if this be held out to 
them as a reward, it will speedily be attained " No case 
has ever been imagined in which the Hibernian idea was 
so completely realized of " the reciprocity being all on one 
side." We are to teach them at an infinite expense of toil 
and time, and then we are to reward them for being taught, 
— in the meanwhile neglecting our own education, and de- 
scending half way to their inferior level. Against this " lame 
and impotent conclusion" we enter our indignant protest, 
and declare before heaven and our unreasonable brethren of 
mankind, that there is no conceivable alternative which we 
would not prefer, — [and indeed that as a race and a people 
we will rather die a thousand deaths than consent to this 
mode of solving the difficulties of our position.] 

SAMUEL HENRY DICKSON, M. D. 

Charleston, S. C, August, 1844. 



»P° ERRATA.~Page 39, line 29, for " centuries" read "generations. 



